The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (35 page)

I remembered Mary’s attempt to soothe me when she spoke of Old Grisel ridding my womb of the child.
You and Gabriel are young . . .you will have other children.
Her wisdom was painful but true. Gabriel could have other children, even if this babe was lost. Lost as I was lost. Beyond all hope. He had to know what was so clear to me: Sacrificing himself would not save me
or
the child I carried. But he
could
save himself. In that moment I thanked God the Gypsy’s Angel was no idealistic hero to fling himself to death in a futile cause.

Gabriel reached out his poet’s fingers and stroked the contours of the wooden block, its top hollowed slightly by the blows that had been struck there over countless years. I imagined living flesh severed atop that grisly surface. The shock of agony, the spurt of blood. Did they allow the prisoner to bleed to death? Or need they bother? Here in the Tower’s filth and damp and darkness, the wound would fester and do death’s work. I clutched my belly, waiting for the horrific crack that was to come, not of the mallet that would drive the blade home, but rather the crack of Gabriel’s will. Gabriel letting his reason rule—telling Walsingham everything the queen wanted to hear.

My babe kicked, to tell me how desperately it yearned for life. I feared it might wrench itself loose from my womb, come forth in a rush of blood, too weak to survive. Would that not be better than pitifully struggling as a pillow was pressed down on its tiny face? There was no way Sir Francis Walsingham could afford to let my child live once he had Gabriel’s confession to add to Eppie’s own. I started, suddenly aware of the weight of Gabriel’s stare. He caught my gaze, held it for long minutes in his own.

“Tell me what you know, Sir Angel,” Walsingham urged almost gently. “You cannot save Mistress Nell, even if you wanted to.”

Tell him.
I mouthed silent words
. Save yourself.

Gabriel’s hand knotted, its sinews tanned and strong. “I am sorry, Nell,” he said, his voice rough with regret. “Know that much is true.”

“I do,” I said, forgiving him all with my eyes.

Walsingham was far too wise to gloat. “There is no point prolonging the misery.”

“That is true enough.” Gabriel looked at me with some emotion I could not name.
Do it.
My heart hammered.
Just tell him and it will be done.
“Let us finish this, Walsingham,” he said, his jaw setting hard. I gasped as Gabriel took a step closer to the block. I realized what he meant to do.

“Gabriel, no!” I broke free of my guard’s grasp, flung myself between Gabriel and the torture master. “You cannot do this!”

“It is done.” Gabriel put me away from him with a tenderness that cut me to the core. My guards hauled me back, the chamber hellish with sweat and fear and pain. My knees buckled as Gabriel flattened his hand—his beautiful hand—upon the block.

I cried out to Walsingham, begged him to show mercy. The spymaster merely compressed his lips and nodded to the torture master.

The floor bucked beneath my feet as Silas pulled the blade from the flame. Black dots swirled before my eyes. But that did not save me from the image that burned into my mind forever: the torture master placing his white-hot blade almost delicately on Gabriel’s wrist.

He picked up his mallet and struck.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The Same Day

W
ERE
I
TO LIVE A THOUSAND YEARS
I
WOULD NEVER
forget the gout of blood, the stench of seared flesh, the agony as Gabriel staggered back, clutching his maimed wrist. He did not make a sound as he waged a valiant war to stay on his feet as the torture master slapped a searing cloth over the wound to seal it. I wrenched away from my guards and did my best to break his fall, but he crashed to the blood-slick floor, face gray as any corpse. I tore a strip of linen from my shift, struggled to tighten it about the stump, shrieking at Walsingham to fetch a surgeon.

Much later, back in my room, I shuddered at the absurdity. Why should Walsingham care if Gabriel perished? He believed Gabriel chose his own fate. The spymaster faced his own grim task—telling the queen he had failed to secure Gabriel’s confession. For Walsingham had been dead certain my husband would betray me. But was I not just as guilty of thinking that? The knowledge tormented me as I paced the cell like a demented soul.

Walsingham ordered my guard to return me to the Bell Tower. I clung to Gabriel, fought them with all my strength. It took both men to wrench me away. They dragged me through the fortress, Josiah begging me to have a care lest I lose my babe. But I would lose that fragile life in any case. They locked me in my cell, though I pounded on the door until my fists bled. In time, I slid down the iron-bound panel to the cold damp floor. Dark engulfed me at last.

I
AWAKENED
G
OD
knows how much later, my muscles cramped from the stones, my mind recounting the horror again and again with nightmare clarity. My hands were rusty with dried blood—Gabriel’s and my own. I begged my jailor for any news. Did my husband yet live? Was he gripped with fever? No emotion softened Renfrew’s violence-hardened features, but Barnaby’s showed pity. I sensed his reluctance to face me whenever he had to bring me food. “You must take a little bread, Mistress,” Barnaby urged. “Or perhaps some meat broth. For the babe’s sake, if not your own.”

“Tell me how my husband fares.”

“Not well, I fear.” Barnaby fiddled with a piece of the manchet bread my mother sent me. He glanced over his shoulder as if to make sure Renfrew was nowhere near. “I heard from another guard that Sir Gabriel raves with fever. He may well die.”

I feared as much already. Why, then, did my heart drop? I clutched at Barnaby’s sleeve, blocking his path to the door. “Take me to him. Just for a moment.”

“Mistress, you must let me go.” He tried to disentangle his sleeve from my fingers, but without Renfrew to press him, Barnaby would not use force against a pregnant woman. His gentleness betrayed a tender side. I seized on that small hope.

“Do you not have a mother? A sister? A wife?” I asked him. “A woman who would suffer anything to tend you out of love? Can you return home and look them in the eye if you deny that tiny mercy to me?”

He flinched, looking terribly young. “I pity you, Mistress. By God, I do. And when I look at you I see my Sarah. She, too, is big with child. But I dare not help you. I would lose my position. Then how would I feed my own babes?”

“ My mother has great wealth. If I ask it she will give you a hundred crowns.”

“Your mother is not here. I cannot risk all for payment I may never get.” He made a move to leave. I would not budge from his path.

“Wait! Wait. I have this ring the queen herself gave me.” I pulled off the circle of gold Elizabeth had used to entrap my mother into betraying I had had a sixth finger on my right hand.

“I’ll not take something so easily traced back to Her Majesty! Might as well thrust my head into a noose!”

“I have one other thing of value. Something wholly my own. I can give it to you now, with my word more will come.” I unfastened the chain about my neck and held it out to him. My astrolabe glinted against my battered palm. “I beg you, sir. Barter the chain to the apothecary to buy the herbs I need to drive back my husband’s fever. Keep the gold pendant, a payment toward all I will owe you.”

“Mistress, I—”

I drew off my wedding ring as well. “I would give you more if I had it,” I said, frantically searching my room for anything else he might want. “My cloak—it is warm. You can take it to your Sarah.”

Barnaby stumbled back a step, as if pushed by the force of my desperation. “I’ll not leave a pregnant woman to freeze! What kind of man do you think I am?”

“A decent one, though necessity demands you do ugly things. I only pray your good conscience will allow you to help me.” My voice cracked. “What harm can it do?” Barnaby’s throat worked. He paced away from me, and I knew his decision hung in the balance. I prayed his love for this Sarah would compel him to take my side.

“What supplies do you need?” he asked.

My tears streamed free as I told him.

B
E READY,
MY
coconspirator warned two days later as he smuggled precious herbs in with a basket of food my mother sent me. I took

my contraband, distilling the precious Saracen’s root as if each drop of its juice was gold, sprinkling other herbs into the brew as well, praying I would get the mixture right.

Why did I not listen to my mother when she told me such housewifely lessons were more important than Copernicus’s theories? That it did not matter if the earth was center of the universe as the church claimed, or if we spun around the sun. Someday a person would be the center of my world—a husband, a child—whenever I grew up enough to love them. My hands trembled as I stored my mixture in a horn container, hoping Renfrew would not find it before my opportunity came.

The Tower lights had nearly all winked out when Barnaby opened my cell door, his face dotted with sweat, eyes busy with worry as we stole through the fortress. “Your husband is worse,” he warned. “They take wagers in the guard room how soon he will die.”

“He will not die,” I said, so fiercely Barnaby hushed me. “I will not let him.”

But I had not been able to rub warmth back into my father’s skin. Death had taken him all the same. And he had been tucked in a clean bed, in a warm room, surrounded by the best care my mother could give.

At last, Barnaby opened Gabriel’s cell. My stomach lurched at the stench of sweat, the sound of feverish groans. Torchlight fell across Gabriel’s face and I fought not to cry out. Suffering gouged hollows under his eyes, flayed away flesh until he looked like a skull covered in parchment. I rushed to him, pressed my hand to his brow. “He’s burning up.”

My voice—Gabriel heard it even through the haze of fever. He tried to grasp my hand in both his own. I flinched, as his stump thudded against my arm, wrenching a cry of pain from his lips. Still, he held on with his good hand, so tight his nails dug into my flesh. His eyes fluttered open, the green depths haunted. “Nell.”

I forced a smile. “I am come to make you well.”

“This must be hell then, seeing you when you cannot be real.” A tear tracked through the grime on his face. “It is no more than a devil like me deserves.”

“I am here. Touch me and you will see.” I pressed his hand to my cheek, kissed his palm. Did my babe sense its father’s despair or was it mere chance it kicked in my womb? Seizing that flutter of life, I dragged Gabriel’s hand to my belly. Pressed it hard against the place where the child had moved. “Feel me, Gabriel,” I urged. “Feel
us
.” The child thrust at its prison as if it would fight for its father if it could.

Gabriel’s eyes widened. I could see him battle to speak. “Real. You are real.”

“I am going to make you well.” I took the horn bottle from where I had hidden it in my bodice. I tugged the stopper free. “Drink this.” I lifted his head from the pillow, pressed the bottle’s rim to his lips. He coughed as the bitter mixture struck his tongue, but he was too weak to pull away. “Your son needs his father,” I told him. “You must fight.”

“No.”

His surrender chilled my heart. “Gabriel, please.”

“Not son.” He struggled to form the words. “Want a daughter.”

A sob tore from my throat. In a world hungry for sons at any price, Gabriel wished for a girl?

“Then live!” I gave him a little shake. “A girl needs a father to love her.”

“Grace,” Gabriel whispered. “Name her Grace.” His eyes rolled back, his hand fell limp to his side. My heart ached with the fear Gabriel would never live to see her. I tucked his good arm beneath his blanket, put a poultice on his wound. I begged him to fight until the last star faded and Barnaby forced me to leave. Renfrew stood right outside my cell door.

Josiah Barnaby never returned.

No one dared give me news of Gabriel again.

E
IGHTY LINES ON
the cell wall marked the days I had been imprisoned by the time my new guards escorted me to Traitor’s Gate, where a barge was moored. I shivered, remembering the journey that brought me to this hellish place, how Gabriel and I watched the currents swirl, treacherous as the court I had come to hate. The queen’s scholars and adventurers and exotic curiosities held no fascination anymore. At last I understood what my mother tried to tell me: Beneath the surface all is rotted at the core.

I possessed more precious things. My mother’s courage, my husband’s passion, my father’s questing mind. Let the queen do what she would. I would not quail before her. I was Gabriel Wyatt’s wife, Thomasin de Lacey’s daughter. I was the mother of a child soon to be born.

The barge moored at the servant’s wharf and I was led through hallways where few servants even strayed. I remembered the sensation when I first arrived at Whitehall, then again at Greenwich, as if I might never find my way out of the labyrinthine corridors again. How strange that Gabriel had always managed to find me. I would have given every shilling I possessed if he would pop around some corner. But Gabriel might be dead for all I knew, his devilish wit silenced, his reckless eyes closed forever. Was that what the queen was going to tell me? Did she hope to wrench a confession from me by telling me my husband was forever beyond my help?

At last, we entered the small, dark closet where Walsingham’s scribe had recorded my words what seemed an eternity ago. A single candle cast its watery glow across the people gathered there. Robert Dudley pacing in agitation. Walsingham with his grim face. Would the queen enter as well? The thought of facing the woman who gave the order to take Gabriel’s hand poured iron into my spine. Stiff with hatred, I thought of Anne Boleyn, whose sixth finger might have been like my own. It is said she was still haughty when she heard the sentence of death.

Time ticked by, the clocks Elizabeth adored seeming to roar loud as the bells church sextons ring. I steeled my nerves against them, vowing that Elizabeth Tudor would never see me cringe. In spite of my resolve, I froze when I heard footsteps nearing. I wrapped my arms around my unborn child to shield my babe from the news to come. I must not crumble for the child’s sake. Even if they told me its father was dead. I turned toward the door, expecting to see the queen. But all my will could not hold back my cry. Dark hair, burning green eyes. Gabriel. Alive.